Abstract

Keywords: transformation; education; contemplation; spirituality; meditation What we know or should know is the common focus of education. However, how we know is just as fundamental to teaching and learning. Contemporary schools emphasize both rational and sensory knowing. The rational involves calculation, explanation, and analysis; the sensory lives off of observation and measurement. Together these form the rational-empirical approach that has set the standard for knowledge across most disciplines. However, another way of knowing-contemplation-has been recognized across time, culture, and disciplines as essential to the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom yet remains absent from today's curriculum and pedagogy. Contemplative knowing is a missing link, one that affects student performance, character, and depth of understanding. In what follows I will offer a brief orientation to contemplation, evidence of its value for contemporary education, and a range of exercises that can be applied in the classroom at any level.